In further news, Apple is already in progress on making the Kindle Fire mostly irrelevant.
Come on. Does anyone here not see the clues?
The iPod Touch hasn't been updated for over 14 months.
There are rumors and reports flying left and right that Apple is ordering 7" screens.
The competition has been helpless at the 10" range to compete so now they are moving to smaller screens.
So, I see Apple doing the following:
3-4" screen sizes - iPhone available from $0 (with contract) or if you don't want a contract pretty easily available online from $200-$300 dollars (for an unlocked iPhone 3Gs). This is pretty much the same price as the current iPod Touches.
7" screen size - New iPod Touch Pro (or iPad Mini if you so desire). I see this device replacing the current iPod Touch. Which would explain why Apple didn't spend any effort on upgrading it during this last development cycle. If they take a slight hit to their margins they could effectively offer this fabled product at basically the same price as the current iPod Touch - $199, $299, and $399.
10" screen size - iPad available for prices of $499, $599, $629, $699, $729, and $829.
11"+ screen sizes - MacBook Airs available from $999.
This just fits so perfectly into Apple modus operandi and the well known strength of their current CEO in production management, that I just cannot see them not doing this. And it fits with what they have done and the rumors casting about. Not to mention it pretty much eliminates the major advantage that the Kindle Fire has over anything offered by Apple, price point.
Isn't an equally relevant comparison to the iPod Touch rather than the iPad? It's the same price (for the entry model), lacks cellular connectivity and has the same memory (for the entry model).
This just fits so perfectly into Apple modus operandi and the well known strength of their current CEO in production management, that I just cannot see them not doing this.
You can, however, disconnect the Fire from the account it shipped with and set it up to use a separate Amazon account (unlike previous Kindles, which were hardwired to your Amazon account).
What!? This is absolutely wrong. I have a Kindle 3 (now called the keyboard edition) and I can de-register it from my Amazon account and assign it to a new one.
What else did you pass off as fact in this "review" that's also inaccurate?
Again, iOS users will be dismayed to find that there's no touch and hold gesture that makes app icons jiggle until you finish moving them around to organize them the way you'd like.
No, you can't pin an app to your favorites by a touch and hold gesture. (Well technically, you do, because you touch and hold in the carousel and get a pop-up menu, but I digress...) You can, however, touch and hold anything within your favorites to move/position them wherever you want in the favorites area. The icons just don't "jiggle" but otherwise it works.
I personally own 2 iPhones (work & personal) and I just tried to touch and hold an app in my favorites on my Kindle Fire, and it just worked. Then again, I'm not Apple-biased against anything lacking the Apple logo.
Perhaps I should just stop reading this (*ahem*) review.
No, you can't pin an app to your favorites by a touch and hold gesture. (Well technically, you do, because you touch and hold in the carousel and get a pop-up menu, but I digress...) You can, however, touch and hold anything within your favorites to move/position them wherever you want in the favorites area. The icons just don't "jiggle" but otherwise it works.
That's the POINT he's making. It has nothing to do with anti-anyone-else rhetoric. It's a difference in usability, and in this case, Apple got it absolutely right and Amazon can't copy it, so they have to go with a substandard means by which to do it.
...so the The New Yorker is delivered as an app. Unfortunately, no matter what I tried, I could not login to actually obtain any content. First, the app crashed as unresponsive when I tried to set up an account...
Let's do a iPod/iPhone/iPad review based on some app that's buggy and crashes. Nah, that would never happen!
That's the POINT he's making. It has nothing to do with anti-anyone-else rhetoric. It's a difference in usability, and in this case, Apple got it absolutely right and Amazon can't copy it, so they have to go with a substandard means by which to do it.
I own an iPod Touch 4g, a personal iPhone 4, a work iPhone 4, and support my wife's personal iPhone 4. I have absolutely no trouble navigating the Kindle Fire home area.
I own an iPod Touch 4g, a personal iPhone 4, a work iPhone 4, and support my wife's personal iPhone 4. I have absolutely no trouble navigating the Kindle Fire home area.
Good. That's fine for you.
I'm saying that from a usability standpoint, the devices differ. In this single case of usability, taken separately from every other, Apple is the clear victor.
I said absolutely nothing about the Kindle being unnavigable. I said Apple has a better solution.
Quote:
You don't think AppleInsider is biased? LOL
Please don't put words in my mouth. All it takes is a glance over my real posts to see that you're lying about me.
Please don't put words in my mouth. All it takes is a glance over my real posts to see that you're lying about me.
Okay. I appreciate the site. Have it in my check-daily RSS feed reader and all that, but you can't help but be a little biased. "Biased" is subjective, so I'm not lying, it's my opinion.
On another note... from the review:
Quote:
Of course, the reason why Apple's design decisions seem better isn't because they're from Apple, but because Apple spent more time thinking about what it was doing rather than just rushing hardware to market.
I agree that the iOS is more polished. Like it was said on page #1 of the review, this is 1.0 of the Kindle Fire, while iOS is on version 5.
But don't forget that the iOS wasn't perfect from day one. How easy it is to forget that, as one example, just two months ago our iOS devices had crap for notifications.
As for the Kindle Fire, it has it's issues. With a nod to Steve Jobs, I was extremely frustrated with the Silk browser's performance until I disabled plugins (a.k.a. Flash). Magically, it was 1000x better!
Another bonus for the Kindle over the iPhone 4/iPod Touch 4g is web browsing performance. For instance, I can actually browse Netflix's desktop version of their site and manage my queue on the Kindle Fire. That page is so slow that it's unusable on the iPhone/iPod. (Can't vouch for the iPad as I don't have one.)
The Netflix experience on the Kindle Fire is terrible, but I have to believe it's an app issue. Games like Plants vs. Zombies, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, play fine on the Kindle Fire. And unlike on my iPhone, when games with ads are loading new ads, the whole game doesn't stall or stutter for a few seconds.
The biggest area where the Kindle Fire lacks is that it does have rough edges. You can't organize Silk browser bookmarks into folders. The auto-correct spelling sometimes picks odd words as the preferred choice. Sometimes you click and the animation on screen indicates a click, but the Fire just sits there as if the click wasn't registered, so you have to click again.
It's definitely version 1.0, but so far in the review, I think some things are inaccurate and others are focusing on the wrong things.
Another bonus for the Kindle over the iPhone 4/iPod Touch 4g is web browsing performance. For instance, I can actually browse Netflix's desktop version of their site and manage my queue on the Kindle Fire. That page is so slow that it's unusable on the iPhone/iPod. (Can't vouch for the iPad as I don't have one.)
Not sure what's going on with your iPhone 4/iPod Touch 4g, but I just navigated to Netflix.com and managed my queue just fine on my iPhone 4 (and over 3G nonetheless).
Last Thursday, I had a chance for some good hands-on time with the Kindle Fire. A co-worker had just received his the night before and brought it in to show me. He gave it to me to try out for the day, so I spent the next 6-7 hours taking the Fire through it's paces. My impression was as follows:
What I liked
The build quality. It seemed like a solid, well-built device if somewhat on the heavy side.
It was fairly easy to use. Even finding the WiFi mac address was no more or less cumbersome than in iOS.
The display was fairly good, though I did notice some red and blue fringing when reading an eBook.
What I didn't like
For me, either the 7" size was too small or the aspect ratio didn't work. It was ok for eBooks and videos, but like the review, I found the size and/or aspect ratio lacking for just about everything else.
The UI was clunky and lacked all the polish I'm used to with my iPhone and iPad. One example was how the home page would disappear and then re-render itself when rotating the Fire from portrait to landscape and back again. Also, flipping through the coverflow-style list of icons was an inconsistent exercise.
Battery life was not what I had expected. Though I didn't use the Fire non-stop for the 6-7 hours (I was at work after all), I was surprised at how quickly the charge was depleted. By the end of the day, the Fire definitely needed to be charged.
Various stalls and crashes which I almost never experience on my iDevices.
Bottom line: With the Kindle Fire, you get what you pay for. For many prospective tablet buyers on a budget, it'll probably be an attractive choice.
As a side note, the Fire went from having a 2-3 day lead time on Friday to being in stock today. Wonder what, if anything, that means.
Apple would never come out with a product with this many glitches? did you install OS7.0? or IOS 5? the glitches had glitches in both of them and not all the glitches have been resolved.
There are always "glitches" in software (normally called "bugs"). Several times recently there have been bugs found in Windows and Mac that have apparently existed for years without being discovered. The key phrase in my remarks was "Apple would never release a product with as many (glitches, bugs, etc.)"
The Kindle Fire is a placeholder product (rumour has it that the "real" 2.0 Fire is set for release in less than six months), and a bug fest extraordinaire.
I really don't understand all the idiots criticising DED for being "biased" here for that reason. The Kindle Fire has been hugely panned in almost every review. It's an absolute piece of junk. Almost every reviewer has given it poorer marks and excoriated it even more than DED does here.
This is a fair review and a reasonably positive one given what everyone else is saying about it.
Anyone who thinks this is Daniel being "biased" needs a reality check.
I take it you disagree. Well, this is just speculation on my part and might be completely wrong.
But I still contend that Apple has long tried to tier their products and the price scale, and I also contend that one of the biggest assets that Apple seems to be wielding right now against their competition is their ability to soak up manufacturing supplies and capacity. This has been noted in numerous articles, in fact since this article there has been another one where ultrabook manufacturers cannot get aluminum bodies because Apple is absorbing the majority of the production capacity. By upsizing the screen of the iPod Touch the maintain their price distribution and deny their competition free reign of the 7" screen production capacity.
Then again, this might just be the next Mac Pro Mini. I suppose we will know in a few months.
Apple created the iPad to fill the space between laptops and pocket devices. So these third parties immediately see it like this.
They think that this is the way things are. So what do they do? They try to fill the 'gaps'. Like a low-resolution bitmap image expanded terribly high, they try to interpolate the pixels between the devices by cutting up the line, spreading it apart, and plopping in intermediaries.
And yet, every single one has failed. Always to the detriment of the company and often to the bankruptcy (or near) of that division or the whole kit and caboodle.
They don't get it.
THIS is the reality.
They're bitmap players in a vector world. Or, if you've seen the parallel between this and Apple's marketing, low-DPI players in a Retina world.
Umm... While this might be technically true. It is practically false. To be price competitive manufacturers of tablets need to take advantage of the principle of keeping manufacturing cost low by relying on the economy of scale. Therefore, they need to stick to fairly common screen sizes, which is not a continuous line.
I mean for instance, look at the rumors flying about Amazon's upcoming 8.9" Kindle Fire. It isn't that size because that is what Amazon dictated instead of say an 8.7" or 9.2" screen. No, it is supposedly that size because LG and Samsung make a display that size already and are promoting it.
Therefore, they need to stick to fairly common screen sizes, which is not a continuous line.
You've missed the point, I think.
There isn't a "continuous line". THEY'RE trying to make a "continuous line". I'm simply trying to illustrate that there's no gaps between the three points. It's not stairs that can be dissected and made shorter by adding more steps; it's a data plot with only three points. Connect these three and you have the entire spectrum.
In further news, Apple is already in progress on making the Kindle Fire mostly irrelevant.
Come on. Does anyone here not see the clues?
The iPod Touch hasn't been updated for over 14 months.
I think you have valid points but it should be noted that the iPod Touch was never updated alongside Apple's flagship product, the iPhone. Always months later.
Whether Apple had to wait for some component for the iPhone 4S or simply wanting to move their two most profitable products ? that use mostly the same internals ? to be 6 months apart from each other is unknown, but makes sense that the Touch won't be updated until after the new year to allow component and market focus to go to the iPhone.
There isn't a "continuous line". THEY'RE trying to make a "continuous line". I'm simply trying to illustrate that there's no gaps between the three points. It's not stairs that can be dissected and made shorter by adding more steps; it's a data plot with only three points. Connect these three and you have the entire spectrum.
Ah, now that I see.
However, I will point out that there is a rather large gap left between the 9.7" point of that line and the 3.5" point of that line. Also, that size range is actually one that many people are looking for. Something bigger than a phone sized screen to make it easier to use, but smaller than the 9.7" of the iPad to make it easier to carry.
For instance, looking at your graphic drawn to scale:
This gap becomes even more important if it corresponds to a given price point.
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism
I think you have valid points but it should be noted that the iPod Touch was never updated alongside Apple's flagship product, the iPhone. Always months later.
Whether Apple had to wait for some component for the iPhone 4S or simply wanting to move their two most profitable products — that use mostly the same internals — to be 6 months apart from each other is unknown, but makes sense that the Touch won't be updated until after the new year to allow component and market focus to go to the iPhone.
That is true. The iPod Touch upgrade was typically released two to three months after the iPhone upgrade. And I would feel a lot more confident of the fact that they were planning to release an upgrade after the start of the new year if they hadn't basically promoted the announcement a month ago as a sort of upgrade.
Then again, it might have simply been a marketing ploy to try and salvage some holiday sales without actually having anything new to sell.
Again, I expect that we will find out in the next handful of months. Because, if Apple doesn't announce a 7" tablet about the same time that they announce the next iPad then I doubt that they will.
There is also the possibility that instead of releasing a smaller product that they might keep older iPads and reduce their price. This is another common tactic of Apple to fill in price points. My hesitation about believing this too much is that Apple has long tried to keep as few products as possible at competing price points, and if they keep the iPod Touch and older iPads then they will be competing at the same price point.
There you go, doing EXACTLY what the third-parties are doing. And look where that got them.
What? With an estimated four to six million Kindle Fires sold in this coming quarter?
I guess what I see isn't so much the size of the device as it is the price of the device that is important. If Apple could make an iPad profitable at $199 then the argument of 7" vs 9.7" becomes mostly a matter of preference.
It just seems much more feasible for any company to hit that sub-$200 sweet spot with a smaller screened device than an iPad.
At this point the $199 spot is a competition between the Kindle Fire and the iPod Touch. And I hate to say it, but it doesn't look too good for the iPod Touch at this time. If I remember correctly the iPod Touch sells about 10 million a quarter, and the Kindle Fire in its first quarter is projected to come within half of those sells.
I just don't see how Apple can afford to not answer this.
Comments
Come on. Does anyone here not see the clues?
The iPod Touch hasn't been updated for over 14 months.
There are rumors and reports flying left and right that Apple is ordering 7" screens.
The competition has been helpless at the 10" range to compete so now they are moving to smaller screens.
So, I see Apple doing the following:
3-4" screen sizes - iPhone available from $0 (with contract) or if you don't want a contract pretty easily available online from $200-$300 dollars (for an unlocked iPhone 3Gs). This is pretty much the same price as the current iPod Touches.
7" screen size - New iPod Touch Pro (or iPad Mini if you so desire). I see this device replacing the current iPod Touch. Which would explain why Apple didn't spend any effort on upgrading it during this last development cycle. If they take a slight hit to their margins they could effectively offer this fabled product at basically the same price as the current iPod Touch - $199, $299, and $399.
10" screen size - iPad available for prices of $499, $599, $629, $699, $729, and $829.
11"+ screen sizes - MacBook Airs available from $999.
This just fits so perfectly into Apple modus operandi and the well known strength of their current CEO in production management, that I just cannot see them not doing this. And it fits with what they have done and the rumors casting about. Not to mention it pretty much eliminates the major advantage that the Kindle Fire has over anything offered by Apple, price point.
http://q10a1.blogspot.com/2011/11/ki...mparisons.html
This just fits so perfectly into Apple modus operandi and the well known strength of their current CEO in production management, that I just cannot see them not doing this.
Oh. You're actually serious.
You can, however, disconnect the Fire from the account it shipped with and set it up to use a separate Amazon account (unlike previous Kindles, which were hardwired to your Amazon account).
What!? This is absolutely wrong. I have a Kindle 3 (now called the keyboard edition) and I can de-register it from my Amazon account and assign it to a new one.
What else did you pass off as fact in this "review" that's also inaccurate?
Again, iOS users will be dismayed to find that there's no touch and hold gesture that makes app icons jiggle until you finish moving them around to organize them the way you'd like.
No, you can't pin an app to your favorites by a touch and hold gesture. (Well technically, you do, because you touch and hold in the carousel and get a pop-up menu, but I digress...) You can, however, touch and hold anything within your favorites to move/position them wherever you want in the favorites area. The icons just don't "jiggle" but otherwise it works.
I personally own 2 iPhones (work & personal) and I just tried to touch and hold an app in my favorites on my Kindle Fire, and it just worked. Then again, I'm not Apple-biased against anything lacking the Apple logo.
Perhaps I should just stop reading this (*ahem*) review.
No, you can't pin an app to your favorites by a touch and hold gesture. (Well technically, you do, because you touch and hold in the carousel and get a pop-up menu, but I digress...) You can, however, touch and hold anything within your favorites to move/position them wherever you want in the favorites area. The icons just don't "jiggle" but otherwise it works.
That's the POINT he's making. It has nothing to do with anti-anyone-else rhetoric. It's a difference in usability, and in this case, Apple got it absolutely right and Amazon can't copy it, so they have to go with a substandard means by which to do it.
...so the The New Yorker is delivered as an app. Unfortunately, no matter what I tried, I could not login to actually obtain any content. First, the app crashed as unresponsive when I tried to set up an account...
Let's do a iPod/iPhone/iPad review based on some app that's buggy and crashes. Nah, that would never happen!
That's the POINT he's making. It has nothing to do with anti-anyone-else rhetoric. It's a difference in usability, and in this case, Apple got it absolutely right and Amazon can't copy it, so they have to go with a substandard means by which to do it.
I own an iPod Touch 4g, a personal iPhone 4, a work iPhone 4, and support my wife's personal iPhone 4. I have absolutely no trouble navigating the Kindle Fire home area.
You don't think AppleInsider is biased? LOL
I own an iPod Touch 4g, a personal iPhone 4, a work iPhone 4, and support my wife's personal iPhone 4. I have absolutely no trouble navigating the Kindle Fire home area.
Good. That's fine for you.
I'm saying that from a usability standpoint, the devices differ. In this single case of usability, taken separately from every other, Apple is the clear victor.
I said absolutely nothing about the Kindle being unnavigable. I said Apple has a better solution.
You don't think AppleInsider is biased? LOL
Please don't put words in my mouth. All it takes is a glance over my real posts to see that you're lying about me.
Please don't put words in my mouth. All it takes is a glance over my real posts to see that you're lying about me.
Okay. I appreciate the site. Have it in my check-daily RSS feed reader and all that, but you can't help but be a little biased. "Biased" is subjective, so I'm not lying, it's my opinion.
On another note... from the review:
Of course, the reason why Apple's design decisions seem better isn't because they're from Apple, but because Apple spent more time thinking about what it was doing rather than just rushing hardware to market.
I agree that the iOS is more polished. Like it was said on page #1 of the review, this is 1.0 of the Kindle Fire, while iOS is on version 5.
But don't forget that the iOS wasn't perfect from day one. How easy it is to forget that, as one example, just two months ago our iOS devices had crap for notifications.
As for the Kindle Fire, it has it's issues. With a nod to Steve Jobs, I was extremely frustrated with the Silk browser's performance until I disabled plugins (a.k.a. Flash). Magically, it was 1000x better!
Another bonus for the Kindle over the iPhone 4/iPod Touch 4g is web browsing performance. For instance, I can actually browse Netflix's desktop version of their site and manage my queue on the Kindle Fire. That page is so slow that it's unusable on the iPhone/iPod. (Can't vouch for the iPad as I don't have one.)
The Netflix experience on the Kindle Fire is terrible, but I have to believe it's an app issue. Games like Plants vs. Zombies, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, play fine on the Kindle Fire. And unlike on my iPhone, when games with ads are loading new ads, the whole game doesn't stall or stutter for a few seconds.
The biggest area where the Kindle Fire lacks is that it does have rough edges. You can't organize Silk browser bookmarks into folders. The auto-correct spelling sometimes picks odd words as the preferred choice. Sometimes you click and the animation on screen indicates a click, but the Fire just sits there as if the click wasn't registered, so you have to click again.
It's definitely version 1.0, but so far in the review, I think some things are inaccurate and others are focusing on the wrong things.
My 2 cents...
Another bonus for the Kindle over the iPhone 4/iPod Touch 4g is web browsing performance. For instance, I can actually browse Netflix's desktop version of their site and manage my queue on the Kindle Fire. That page is so slow that it's unusable on the iPhone/iPod. (Can't vouch for the iPad as I don't have one.)
Not sure what's going on with your iPhone 4/iPod Touch 4g, but I just navigated to Netflix.com and managed my queue just fine on my iPhone 4 (and over 3G nonetheless).
Last Thursday, I had a chance for some good hands-on time with the Kindle Fire. A co-worker had just received his the night before and brought it in to show me. He gave it to me to try out for the day, so I spent the next 6-7 hours taking the Fire through it's paces. My impression was as follows:
What I liked
- The build quality. It seemed like a solid, well-built device if somewhat on the heavy side.
- It was fairly easy to use. Even finding the WiFi mac address was no more or less cumbersome than in iOS.
- The display was fairly good, though I did notice some red and blue fringing when reading an eBook.
What I didn't like- For me, either the 7" size was too small or the aspect ratio didn't work. It was ok for eBooks and videos, but like the review, I found the size and/or aspect ratio lacking for just about everything else.
- The UI was clunky and lacked all the polish I'm used to with my iPhone and iPad. One example was how the home page would disappear and then re-render itself when rotating the Fire from portrait to landscape and back again. Also, flipping through the coverflow-style list of icons was an inconsistent exercise.
- Battery life was not what I had expected. Though I didn't use the Fire non-stop for the 6-7 hours (I was at work after all), I was surprised at how quickly the charge was depleted. By the end of the day, the Fire definitely needed to be charged.
- Various stalls and crashes which I almost never experience on my iDevices.
Bottom line: With the Kindle Fire, you get what you pay for. For many prospective tablet buyers on a budget, it'll probably be an attractive choice.As a side note, the Fire went from having a 2-3 day lead time on Friday to being in stock today. Wonder what, if anything, that means.
Apple would never come out with a product with this many glitches? did you install OS7.0? or IOS 5? the glitches had glitches in both of them and not all the glitches have been resolved.
There are always "glitches" in software (normally called "bugs"). Several times recently there have been bugs found in Windows and Mac that have apparently existed for years without being discovered. The key phrase in my remarks was "Apple would never release a product with as many (glitches, bugs, etc.)"
The Kindle Fire is a placeholder product (rumour has it that the "real" 2.0 Fire is set for release in less than six months), and a bug fest extraordinaire.
I really don't understand all the idiots criticising DED for being "biased" here for that reason. The Kindle Fire has been hugely panned in almost every review. It's an absolute piece of junk. Almost every reviewer has given it poorer marks and excoriated it even more than DED does here.
This is a fair review and a reasonably positive one given what everyone else is saying about it.
Anyone who thinks this is Daniel being "biased" needs a reality check.
Oh. You're actually serious.
I take it you disagree. Well, this is just speculation on my part and might be completely wrong.
But I still contend that Apple has long tried to tier their products and the price scale, and I also contend that one of the biggest assets that Apple seems to be wielding right now against their competition is their ability to soak up manufacturing supplies and capacity. This has been noted in numerous articles, in fact since this article there has been another one where ultrabook manufacturers cannot get aluminum bodies because Apple is absorbing the majority of the production capacity. By upsizing the screen of the iPod Touch the maintain their price distribution and deny their competition free reign of the 7" screen production capacity.
Then again, this might just be the next Mac Pro Mini. I suppose we will know in a few months.
Here's how I see it.
Apple created the iPad to fill the space between laptops and pocket devices. So these third parties immediately see it like this.
They think that this is the way things are. So what do they do? They try to fill the 'gaps'. Like a low-resolution bitmap image expanded terribly high, they try to interpolate the pixels between the devices by cutting up the line, spreading it apart, and plopping in intermediaries.
And yet, every single one has failed. Always to the detriment of the company and often to the bankruptcy (or near) of that division or the whole kit and caboodle.
They don't get it.
THIS is the reality.
They're bitmap players in a vector world. Or, if you've seen the parallel between this and Apple's marketing, low-DPI players in a Retina world.
Umm... While this might be technically true. It is practically false. To be price competitive manufacturers of tablets need to take advantage of the principle of keeping manufacturing cost low by relying on the economy of scale. Therefore, they need to stick to fairly common screen sizes, which is not a continuous line.
I mean for instance, look at the rumors flying about Amazon's upcoming 8.9" Kindle Fire. It isn't that size because that is what Amazon dictated instead of say an 8.7" or 9.2" screen. No, it is supposedly that size because LG and Samsung make a display that size already and are promoting it.
Therefore, they need to stick to fairly common screen sizes, which is not a continuous line.
You've missed the point, I think.
There isn't a "continuous line". THEY'RE trying to make a "continuous line". I'm simply trying to illustrate that there's no gaps between the three points. It's not stairs that can be dissected and made shorter by adding more steps; it's a data plot with only three points. Connect these three and you have the entire spectrum.
In further news, Apple is already in progress on making the Kindle Fire mostly irrelevant.
Come on. Does anyone here not see the clues?
The iPod Touch hasn't been updated for over 14 months.
I think you have valid points but it should be noted that the iPod Touch was never updated alongside Apple's flagship product, the iPhone. Always months later.
Whether Apple had to wait for some component for the iPhone 4S or simply wanting to move their two most profitable products ? that use mostly the same internals ? to be 6 months apart from each other is unknown, but makes sense that the Touch won't be updated until after the new year to allow component and market focus to go to the iPhone.
You've missed the point, I think.
There isn't a "continuous line". THEY'RE trying to make a "continuous line". I'm simply trying to illustrate that there's no gaps between the three points. It's not stairs that can be dissected and made shorter by adding more steps; it's a data plot with only three points. Connect these three and you have the entire spectrum.
Ah, now that I see.
However, I will point out that there is a rather large gap left between the 9.7" point of that line and the 3.5" point of that line. Also, that size range is actually one that many people are looking for. Something bigger than a phone sized screen to make it easier to use, but smaller than the 9.7" of the iPad to make it easier to carry.
For instance, looking at your graphic drawn to scale:
This gap becomes even more important if it corresponds to a given price point.
I think you have valid points but it should be noted that the iPod Touch was never updated alongside Apple's flagship product, the iPhone. Always months later.
Whether Apple had to wait for some component for the iPhone 4S or simply wanting to move their two most profitable products — that use mostly the same internals — to be 6 months apart from each other is unknown, but makes sense that the Touch won't be updated until after the new year to allow component and market focus to go to the iPhone.
That is true. The iPod Touch upgrade was typically released two to three months after the iPhone upgrade. And I would feel a lot more confident of the fact that they were planning to release an upgrade after the start of the new year if they hadn't basically promoted the announcement a month ago as a sort of upgrade.
Then again, it might have simply been a marketing ploy to try and salvage some holiday sales without actually having anything new to sell.
Again, I expect that we will find out in the next handful of months. Because, if Apple doesn't announce a 7" tablet about the same time that they announce the next iPad then I doubt that they will.
There is also the possibility that instead of releasing a smaller product that they might keep older iPads and reduce their price. This is another common tactic of Apple to fill in price points. My hesitation about believing this too much is that Apple has long tried to keep as few products as possible at competing price points, and if they keep the iPod Touch and older iPads then they will be competing at the same price point.
For instance, looking at your graphic drawn to scale:
There you go, doing EXACTLY what the third-parties are doing. And look where that got them.
There you go, doing EXACTLY what the third-parties are doing. And look where that got them.
What? With an estimated four to six million Kindle Fires sold in this coming quarter?
I guess what I see isn't so much the size of the device as it is the price of the device that is important. If Apple could make an iPad profitable at $199 then the argument of 7" vs 9.7" becomes mostly a matter of preference.
It just seems much more feasible for any company to hit that sub-$200 sweet spot with a smaller screened device than an iPad.
At this point the $199 spot is a competition between the Kindle Fire and the iPod Touch. And I hate to say it, but it doesn't look too good for the iPod Touch at this time. If I remember correctly the iPod Touch sells about 10 million a quarter, and the Kindle Fire in its first quarter is projected to come within half of those sells.
I just don't see how Apple can afford to not answer this.